At the National Socialist convention in Nuremberg, Minister Goebbels declared that only two great fronts still exist in the world today: the Bolshevist front, including all those who countenance Bolshevism; and the anti-Bolshevist, Fascist, and authoritarian front. National Socialism stands at the head of the second and has saved Germany from Bolshevism. Every conscientious person must therefore take his stance unequivocally in favor of the anti-Bolshevist front.
Understandably, this rhetoric has made a great impression on many people. The terrible events in Spain, the assassination of the clergy and religious, and the destruction of precious cultural treasures have rightly led to reactions of terror and horror everywhere, and have made many aware of the fearful dynamic set in motion by the passions of the masses that have been unleashed.
We are not interested here in the question of how far Moscow can be held responsible for the events in Spain, nor whether the Spanish phenomenon is truly Bolshevism rather than anarchism. The Spanish atrocities were not needed in order to recognize the terrible nature of Bolshevism. Its materialistic ideology, its disregard for all personal freedom, its collectivism and anti-personalism, its mortal hatred of Christianity and indeed of all religion, are sufficient grounds for every true Catholic to reject it unambiguously and to oppose it unconditionally.
Nevertheless, the ideological division of the present-day world into Bolshevists and anti-Bolshevists that Goebbels proclaimed at the Nuremberg party convention is false. The real battle lines drawn at the level of ideas are, in fact, very different. I have often pointed out in these pages that there is only one real antithesis to all errors, namely, truth itself. For errors, no matter how different they may be among themselves, are not truly antithetical to one another. Traditionalism and ontologism, Pelagianism and the Protestant doctrine of sola fide (by faith alone), collectivism and liberal individualism, socialism and capitalism—these pairs do tend in opposite directions, but because one error never counteracts what is specifically false in another, opposite error, none of them constitutes a genuine antithesis. In every case, the two are fundamentally related; they both proceed from the same initial falsehood, even though they move in opposite directions. Only the one truth opposes all errors, whatever their nature, both in their most decisive point and in their specific disvalue. One error can never be overcome by another, opposite error; the devil cannot be cast out with the help of Beelzebub.
In reality, there have been only two fronts in the world for the past two thousand years: the front for Christ and the front against Christ. He is the cornerstone which separates all spirits. All other antitheses bypass the decisive question and thus remain superficial.
The question “for or against Christ” can be understood either in a more specifically religious sense or in a broader cultural and intellectual sense. In the former case, the question of the true Christian faith is the criterion of being for or against Christ; in the latter, it is the question of how much someone still holds fast to the foundations of the Christian West in a moral, legal, sociological, and cultural sense.
The contemporary intellectual crisis in Europe divides people into two camps: the enemies of Christian Western culture and those who somehow still hold on (in greatly varying degrees) to the foundations of this culture. The latter group may also include those who cannot be designated as Christians in a religious sense.
So what, then, defines the Christian West in this broader cultural and intellectual sense? In what respect does the Christian West form the real front against both Nazism and Communism? The first decisive element is the stance toward the question of truth. A profound reverence for truth is an integral aspect of Christian Western culture, as is a clear consciousness that the question of truth stands at the beginning of all decisions and cannot in any way be subordinated to practical considerations.
The view that [German] Minister of Culture Schemm expressed in an address to professors of the University of Munich in 1933 is diametrically opposed to this reverence for the question of truth: “From now on, what matters for you is not to ascertain whether something is true, but rather whether it is in line with the National Socialist revolution.” The same holds for the following words in the National Socialist program: “We confess allegiance to Christianity insofar as it is in keeping with the Germanic racial sensibility.” Here, the decisive question is no longer whether the doctrine of Christianity is objectively true, but whether it is in keeping with the subjective sensibility of a race and conforms to a certain racial ethos.
It must be noted that this attitude is much more radically opposed to the spirit of Christianity than the typical form of atheism, for the latter acknowledges, at least in principle, the decisive role of the question of truth. In National Socialism, however, the question of truth as such is suppressed in favor of a purely subjective factor. The question of the truth or falsity of a worldview, which alone should be decisive for our positive or negative response to it, is deposed from its seat of judgment. This connotes a still deeper breach with any adherence to objective truth than is to be found even in radical skepticism. When the latter denies the existence of objective truth, it necessarily takes seriously the question of truth as such. Here, however, the question of truth has been trivialized. The faculty for discerning the seriousness of the question of truth has died; the interest in the elementary question “What is true?” has been extinguished. This signifies an irrevocable break with the whole of Christian Western culture, which rests on the foundation of reverence for truth.
A second foundational element of Christian Western culture is the conviction that there is an objective moral law which is independent of all subjective interests, arbitrariness, and mere power. Whether committed by individual rulers or democratic masses, breaches of the law have always occurred de facto in the history of the West. But there has always been some adherence to the idea of an objective law and the question of right has been regarded as independent of the sheer assertion of anyone’s egoistic wishes. This belief in an objective law immune to the arbitrariness of individuals and nations is an inheritance of the Christian worldview, which is still preserved even by many enemies of Christianity (although this is illogical from a strictly religious point of view) and also underlies the concept of the League of Nations.
The frequently repeated declaration of the National Socialist leaders that there is no objective right or wrong, and that “what is right is what is useful for the German people,” fundamentally breaks with this foundational element of the public life of the Christian West. The path for this National Socialist doctrine was prepared in the realm of philosophical theory by various forms of relativism and positivism, but only National Socialism has dared to draw out its basic consequence in praxis—that is, the conscious, programmatic renunciation of the foundation expressed in the words iustitia fundamentum regnorum (justice is the foundation of states).
Here too, an unbridgeable abyss opens up. On the one side stand all those who still hold fast to an objective law and believe that in individual cases of conflict, the question of right ought to take precedence over the question of sheer power; on the other stand all those who deny any such objective law in principle. It is absolutely impossible for these two sides to reach an understanding or meet on common ground. In cases of conflict, they cannot even appeal to a purely timeless, objective norm on the basis of which a decision could be made, for the one side denies that there is any authority higher than its own naked interests. We must not underestimate the depth of this difference, for here all spirits definitively part ways. With the denial of an objective law one not only stands outside Christianity as a religion but also outside the entire classical and humane cultural tradition of the West, which has received its decisive formation from Christianity.
A third fundamental element of Christian Western culture is the primacy of the spiritual sphere over the vital and, a fortiori, over mere matter. The divinely ordained hierarchy of the spheres of being has been denied by many philosophical s
ystems, but Soviet Russia and the Third Reich were the first to deny this hierarchy in their official state ideologies and to draw the consequences of this denial in their laws and in the way they educate their youth. In Christian Western culture, the spiritual sphere is held to be higher than the vital and purely material spheres, the latter of which were bound to serve the former.
It is also considered to be ontologically superior. This position finds its classical expression in the wonderful words of St. Thomas: anima forma corporis (the soul is the form of the body). The composition of a person’s blood is not decisive for his spirit; as a spiritual person, man proceeds directly from the hand of God, and his free will, his education, and his openness to the workings of grace play the decisive role in his development. Health is certainly a value, but what is it when compared to high intellectual gifts, to moral or religious values? Geniuses who were pitiful figures from a vital perspective have often kindled people’s enthusiasm—and great intellects were so often such small, frail, and sickly men from a vital point of view. When a person possessed great intellectual capacities despite his deficiencies in the vital sphere, people grasped the tremendous victory of the spirit that he embodied. Two examples would be Kant and Prince Eugene; the latter, as is generally known, was physically deformed.
Both economic materialism, in which all spiritual values are merely a means to an end, and racial materialism, which idolizes the vital sphere, break in principle with this self-evident primacy of the spirit. The laws governing sterilization and marriage in the Third Reich and, above all, its racial doctrine—which reduces the individual spiritual person to a mere product of race—are clear expressions of a radical breach with this cornerstone of Christian Western culture.
A fourth factor—perhaps the most decisive of all—is connected with this last point. Since the Renaissance, various liberal theories have stripped the human person of his true nobility as the image of God. First, immortality was denied to the person, then freedom of will, then the capacity to make meaningful, intentional responses. Some saw the human being as a bundle of meaningless sensations, others saw him as a more highly developed animal. The practical consequences of this devaluation of the person were never drawn. A certain reverence for the dignity of the person, his inalienable rights, and his freedom of opinion lived on, though in reality such things logically presuppose the Christian concept of the human person.
It was left to Bolshevism and National Socialism to draw the ultimate consequences of this devaluation of the human person and to develop an anti-personalism which is radically opposed to Christianity. Here, the essential point is not whether the person is held to be a mere means for the state, the nation, a racial community, or an economic collective. What is decisive is the collectivism that subordinates the person in his very being and value to some natural community. According to the Christian conception, every human being has an immortal soul destined to be a vessel of grace and to enjoy eternal communion with God, which therefore possesses a higher value than anything else on earth. The fate of states, nations, and peoples as such is incomparably less important than the eternal salvation of a single immortal soul.
It is here most of all—in the position one takes toward the individual—that thinkers part ways. Anyone who advocates this anti-personalism has drawn the ultimate consequence of his breach with Christianity and has joined the irreconcilable enemies of Christian Western culture. Anyone who still holds fast to genuine reverence for the individual person is in some way drawing, albeit unconsciously, from Christian thought.
Closely connected with this is one’s attitude toward the poor, the sick, and the weak. Christ says: “As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40). The National Socialist morality of the master race views the sick and the weak as “faulty products” who are a tiresome burden on human society. The “hero ethos” of National Socialism and the ethos of the Sermon on the Mount constitute an utter antithesis. It is futile to attempt to combine them in any way; a choice must be made between these two worlds—separated, as they are, by an unbridgeable abyss.
If we take our starting point from these decisive philosophical antitheses in the contemporary political-social-cultural crisis, it becomes clear that the true demarcation of fronts turns out to be quite different from what the National Socialist party convention in Nuremberg would have us think. Purely political interests and exclusively tactical deliberations may lead to the formation of certain groupings, but the fronts that are based on worldviews—which will, in the long run, prove to be decisive in the political realm as well—are definitively sundered according to whether they make a radical break with the entirety of Christian Western culture or adhere to it, at least in its essential foundations.…
The ideological distinction between Bolshevism and National Socialism is not so very great, despite all the violent political animosity between them, which has totally different roots. One person might want to make an ally of Bolshevism while another may want an alliance with National Socialism, but the Catholic is separated from both by an unbridgeable abyss. He cannot choose between them, because they are essentially united on those critical points that separate them decisively from Christianity. All he can do is oppose both, pointing to Christ and the foundations of Christian Western culture, which alone constitute their true antithesis. He must see these ideologies as two equally dangerous, irreconcilable enemies of Christ.
THE PARTING OF WAYS
Der christliche Ständestaat
May 27, 1934
If the previous essay is addressed not only to Catholics but to all who live within the world of Western civilization, this essay is specifically addressed to Catholics. In particular, von Hildebrand wants to challenge those who adhere to a “merely theoretical, merely literary Catholicism” and who are therefore easily confused about the compatibility of Nazism and Catholicism. He admonishes them to a more strongly “lived Catholicism,” for this will protect them from unreal theorizing and will enable them to “feel in their bones” the deadly antagonism of Nazism and Catholicism. In tranquil times, those who are merely Catholic on paper and those who are Catholic with their whole being mingle together and look alike, but a dramatic moment like the 1930s in Vienna has a way of revealing who is really who.
The present epoch is characterized by the fact that so many things once hidden are now being unveiled: both the good and the bad in people, which had remained concealed from others (as well as from themselves), is now coming to light. Hidden and base passions, brutality, ruthless violence, fanatical resentment, unprincipled behavior, cowardice, intellectual confusion, and weakness, on the one hand, and heroism, kindness, strength of character, noble courage, unwavering intellectual clarity, and a deep, indestructible religiosity, on the other—all these qualities are being revealed in many persons in whom one might never have suspected their existence. All this makes for a fearful trial, leading inevitably to a decisive parting of ways among persons: for the present hour leaves no room for liberal harmlessness, for just comfortably carrying on, for vacillation between good and evil, for a “classroom idealism” backed by no genuine commitment.
The present time, with its penchant for extremes, its tendency to absolutize positions, its fanatical idolatries, its unprecedented and ruthless propaganda, puts everyone to the ultimate test and compels the revelation of every person’s true self. Even in the case of those who are merely confused and swept along by the tide, the present time reveals the muddled character of their thinking and how weakly they are rooted in the realm of true values.
For us Catholics, however, this time involves, above all, an exposure of our true convictions regarding Christ, His Church, and His Revelation.
The fact that National Socialism, in its content, its external power, and its broad dissemination, does not fail to impress certain Catholics reveals in a frightening way how theoretical and academic the world of religion has been for them, and how little the world of religion has ac
tually possessed that status in their thinking and feeling to which it does, and indeed must, lay claim by virtue of its essence. Such idols would have long been rendered obsolete for any person whose life was truly nourished by the realm of the supernatural and the genuine hierarchy of values in the Christian spirit. Enslavement to an idol always proves that the soul of the person in question is not filled with true goods. When a disvalue is elevated to the status of an idol, it demonstrates that the person remained completely untouched by true values. If, on the other hand, a genuine good is elevated to the status of an idol by overestimating its value, it demonstrates that the person had not been sufficiently filled with higher values—and, ultimately, with God.
If a person has a deep relationship with the world of true art which fills his spirit with joy, he will not constantly wish he were going to the movies. If a man is filled with a great, profound love for a woman, the attractiveness of other women will not affect him. Whoever has really grasped the glory of the courts of the Lord, whoever has tasted the sweetness of the yoke of Christ, whoever has drunk of His living water, can no longer be intoxicated with blood and soil; such a person can no longer mistake stones for bread.
The fact that National Socialism possesses some kind of attraction for many Catholics starkly reveals that Christ has not reigned as King in their hearts, even if they are daily communicants and profess to be believing, convinced Catholics.
How is it even possible for the glorification of race to enthrall a person who has been born “not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God”? This whole sphere has long since lost its power to attract such a person—to say nothing of the horrible materialism of blood which, with its explicitly anti-Christian inversion of values, ought to awaken the impassioned protest of any Christian who is spiritually awake.
My Battle Against Hitler Page 33